Swing Life Away
by piper maru duchovny
Summary: He's the reason her mother sent her to school with a case of mace and she's the beauty in the Dolphins hoodie who won't put up with his crap. - a Shules alt-verse.


**It's been a minute since I've written anything for the Psych fandom but I still feel very much at home with these characters so I hope I did them justice in this alt-verse setting. Happy reading! Please review. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. Not yours. Definitely Steve Frank's. **

* * *

_Am I still your charm or am I just bad luck,  
Are we getting closer or are we just getting more lost,  
I'll show you mine if you show me yours first,  
Lets compare scars, I'll tell you whose is worse,  
Lets unwrite these pages and replace them with our own words_

_We live on front porches and swing life away,  
We get by just fine here on minimum wage,  
If love is a labor I'll slave til the end,  
I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand  
-Rise Against;_

* * *

The crowd tends to part like the Red Sea around him; he's off-putting at first glance with his motorcycle helmet tucked up under his arm, long hair falling across his face, and his motorcycle boots squeaking on the tile floor of the auditorium as he walks in late to freshman orientation. At twenty-one, he is the kind of man that mothers warn their daughters about when they drop them off at college; with six piercings on his face alone – two more if you count the ones in his ears – and a healing hole in a place his mother would kill him for if he hadn't removed it for medical purposes already, people tend to give him a wide berth. He doesn't care, he prefers the solitude. He flops down in an empty seat toward the middle of the room next to a petite blond in a Miami Dolphins hoodie sitting next to a man who looked like he could knock the Hulk on his ass.

"Have I missed all the good parts," he whispers in the girl's ear. His shaggy brown hair falls across his face as he places the helmet on the ground and props his feet on top of it before leaning back in his seat.

"You walked in with fifteen minutes left out of a ninety minute lecture, what do you think?" The blond angles her body away from him and crosses her legs to tap the toe of her Converse against the seat in front of her.

"I'm Shawn," he tells her like she's supposed to give a damn.

"Do you mind," she growls. "I'm trying to hear the dean."

"Do good work," he imitates the old man at the podium. "Don't do drugs. Don't throw keggers. But if you must do these things then make sure you don't get the cops called on us. Save me a beer."

"Look," she turns to him with a huff. "Normally I would be really happy to meet you but I'm trying to hear this."

He sighs and settles deeper into his seat. "Can I at least get a name to work with?"

There is a long pause before she whispers, "Juliet."

"It's very nice to meet you, Juliet." The crooked grin on his face makes his normally angry looking lip piercings seem quite adorable and innocent. "I hope your brother doesn't clock me for distracting you."

"How'd you know he was my brother," she asks.

He shrugs and raises a hand to his head. "Just my special gift."

"Would you shut the hell up?" The body builder leans around his little sister to glare at the hoodlum who would dare distract her.

Shawn raises his hands in surrender. "Sorry, bro."

"What did you call me," the pale Hulk begins to rage.

Pretty blond – Juliet, he corrects himself – raises her hands to her brother's chest and pushes him down in the seat. "Ewan, chill."

"Yeah, Ewan," Shawn retorts. "Chill."

"Shut up, Shawn."

As luck would have it, their ancient troll of a dean makes the last fifteen minutes of the lecture stretch into a nice half hour nap for the travel weary Shawn Spencer. He had left Northern California in the wee hours of the morning before dawn to travel to the small college deep in the forest ridden mountains of Oregon. Now he's bone weary and blurry eyed with a deep seated hankering for a pineapple smoothie which he plans to get when the crowd thins after the lecture is over.

"Shawn Spencer," his mother's voice calls across the crowd after he wakes up enough to let Juliet and her Hulk-brother out of their row.

He gives his mother a shy grin and opens his arms to the tiny woman. "Mama bear!"

The only reason that he is here is because his mother asked him to try school – at least for one semester while she was doing some guest lecturing in the psychology department. It had taken two weeks of daily phone calls and repeated promises that her desire for his higher education had nothing to do with his bastard of a father before he finally relented and agreed to give the school a try. Learning had never exactly been hard for the boy, the young man, with an eidetic memory that had been finally honed by his overbearing father but school had never been Shawn's priority – living life, no regrets, and experiencing things had been his preferred method of existing.

"Goose," Madeleine Spencer greets her son. Even though she is tiny she is formidable and she wraps him up in a hug just as much as she did when he was tiny enough for her to carry. "I'm glad you came – even if you were late and proceeded to snore through the rest of the orientation."

"Yeah, well…" He twists the toe of his boot impishly into the floor as he rubs the back of his neck with mild embarrassment. "Did you manage to pick up my room assignment and stuff for me?"

"Yes," she relents and hands the fat envelope of papers over to him. "You need to go to administrative office and get your photo ID."

"Yes ma'am," he acknowledges and ruffles through the paper. His room key falls into his palm and he pockets it as he continues through his papers – his class list looks simple enough, he remembers his dorm from the campus map he saw in the brochure his mother had given him last spring; it all seems simple enough.

"You can park your bike over at my cottage," she tells him. "It's just down the path from your dorm. Freshmen aren't allowed to have vehicles on campus and I couldn't get the dean to budge on that one even though you're twenty-one."

"That's cool," he sighs. He leans forward and kisses her cheek. "Thanks, ma."

She nods. "I stopped by your dad's on my way up here from Los Angeles last week and picked up some of your stuff that I thought you might want."

"Okay."

"He misses you," she tells him.

He scoffs wildly at the mere proposition. "Yeah, right, and he's also decided that fishing is barbaric and he's giving up red meat. Get real, ma. The day that Henry Spencer misses me is the day that hell freezes over."

"Goose," she whispers. "What happened?"

"Don't worry about it," Shawn insists with the shake of his head. "Three years is a long time…"

"Too long to not talk to your father."

"I haven't seen you in six months," Shawn redirects her. "Can we please put a pin in this argument until we catch up?"

"I suppose," Maddy agrees. "You should go get your ID, park your bike, and get settled in your dorm. I will be over at the psychology building for most of the day if you need me but I doubt you want to spend your first night of college with your mom – go have fun, Shawn. I'll check up on you after your classes tomorrow?"

He nods and kisses her cheek. "I'm glad I'm here."

It doesn't take long for him to run his errands and within the hour he is settling in his dorm; mercifully his mother's connections had gotten him a single room on the crowded co-ed floor of the freshman dorm. He tosses his bags in the corner with the boxes from his father's house and throws himself down on his bed with his boots still on as he tucked his arms behind his head. The only thing his mother had unpacked for him had been a few photos that had been on his desk back home; the first was of him and his beloved best friend, Burton Guster, in their graduation gowns three years ago tucked into a frame next to a photo from their kindergarten graduation – in both photos the boys have their arms thrown around each other and their caps hanging from their fingertips – the other photo is a family photo from before everything got shot to hell and his abrasive father sent his mother running for the hills. He takes the Olan Mills style photo in his hand and chucks it as hard as he can at the far wall with a grin on his face as the glass shatters and rains down at the foot of his bed. "Fuck you, Henry."

The phone beside his bed rings and he plucks it mindlessly from its cradle. "Shawn's den of debauchery."

"Still a moron," his best friend greets him on the other end of the line. "Your mom called and said you might need to talk."

"Gus, don't be a flat soufflé," Shawn orders. "When have I ever needed to talk?"

Gus is going to school on the other side of the country; NYU or Princeton, Shawn was too busy planning his escape when Gus was trying to make his decision to remember clearly. He misses his best friend but he's been fine on his own for three years and he surely doesn't need a pair of shoulders now. Gus takes his abrasive qualities in stride. "How's Oregon?"

"Wet," Shawn says decidedly. "I got caught in a rain storm just past the state line this morning – I'm not gonna have dry clothes for a week."

"You do know about those crazy inventions called dryers, yeah? There is probably a bank of them in this thing called the laundry room of your dorm," Gus explains sarcastically. "You also might want to think of investing in a car so that doesn't happen."

"Okay, mom," he growls. "How is the eastern seaboard, Burton?"

"Low blow," Gus counters. "And it's fine. I'm scheduled to graduate with my pharmacology degree this year."

"Early," Shawn points out. "Aren't you just a regular Doogie Howser of Pharmacology, Gus!?"

"You'll come to my graduation," he asks.

Shawn smiles for real. "Of course, dude. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Good," Gus tells him. "Now last I had heard you were in South Carolina working as a life guard – how did you end up in school in Oregon?"

"My mom," Shawn explains. "She thinks at higher education will magically fix things for me – like there is something wrong with exploring the world and working fifteen jobs in three years – and she's guest professing here for the school year so I got a bomb ass deal on tuition."

"Understood." Shawn hears a lot of noise on the other end of the line. "Listen, Shawn, I've got to go but I'll talk to you soon – maybe I can come visit when I'm home for break."

"Thanks for not asking me to come to Santa Barbara."

"I'm not an idiot, Shawn," Gus explains. "I'll talk to you again soon, okay? Stay in one place for a few weeks for a change."

"Copy that."

When his stomach growls, Shawn decides the next order on his agenda has to be food. He remembers seeing the cafeteria not far from where orientation had been held and so he shrugs on his jacket, digs out his wallet, and takes a glance outside to make sure it isn't raining before he leaves the building. Outside at the curb he spots Juliet rooted to the sidewalk with teary eyes as she waves goodbye to her brother as his car pulls away. Shawn gives her a sympathetic look before sprinting toward her with a grin on his face. "Hey Jules!"

"My name is Juliet," she insists as she turns to glare at her newly found acquaintance. "What do you want, Shawn?"

"First time away from home," he asks.

"No," she says incredulously. "I'm eighteen – it's not like I have never ever been away before."

"Okay," Shawn agrees. "But it is your first time being away for a significant period of time?"

"Yeah," she relents.

"It gets easier," he promises. "The first… forty-eight ish hours are the worst and then it gets easier, I swear. And the secret to the first forty-eight hours is to keep so busy that you can't even think about the people you're missing."

"I'm fine," she insists and wipes at her tears furiously with the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

"What's a Miami girl doing all the way over here in Oregon anyway," he asks.

Juliet narrows her brow. "How do you know I'm from Miami and not just a Dolphins fan?"

"Cause no one outside of Miami likes the Dolphins," he counters and she glares. "Sorry – Niners fan."

"Mhmm."

"Let me treat you to dinner," he insists. "Make up for accidentally insulting you."

"Uh-huh." She crosses her arms over her chest and the wind whips her long blond tresses across her face in a way that adorably obscures her glare. "And why should I do that? I just met you and you've already made me miss part of a lecture, insulted the Dolphins, and made my big brother want to kill you. Plus, you kind of look like the reason my mom sent a case of mace with me."

"Fair enough," he agrees. "But you should have dinner with me in spite of all that because I'm the reason you're being all sassy and adorable right now instead of crying into your Dolphins sweater with homesickness."

She eyes him for a long moment before dropping her arms from the defensive posture. "Fine but you're buying and I should warn you that I am a champion eater."

"Fantastic." He drapes an arm around her shoulder and she promptly shoves it off but allows him to keep breathing so he calculates it as a win. "Let's see how much damage we can do to my meal plan."


End file.
